Posts Tagged ‘Russia’

By Cnaan Lipshiz.. Three years ago, Rabbi Ari Edelkopf and his wife, Chana, worked around the clock for weeks to show off their community and city to the many foreigners in town for the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The Chabad emissaries from the United States came to the city on Russia’s Black Sea coast in 2002. By the time the Olympics opened, they could offer three synagogues, five information centers and 24/7 kosher catering to thousands of people in the city, which has only 3,000 Jews. (more…)

By Yoni Ben Menachem.. This week (week 3, 2017) representatives of all the Palestinian factions concluded a three-day meeting hosted by a Russian research center in Moscow. The meeting explored ways to end the disputes and the rift between the West Bank and Gaza and reach a national reconciliation.

Also taking part in the conference was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. According to Palestinian sources, he told the participants that the ongoing rift damages the Palestinian issue and that the international community exploits the situation to pressure and extort the Palestinians. (more…)

By Ofra Bengio.. Russia has fulfilled a long-held dream of reaching the warm water of the Mediterranean and is casting itself as the hegemon in the region. Sixty years have lapsed since the Baghdad Pact which grouped together Turkey, Iran, Iraq and the West in an alliance against the Soviet Union and the concomitant Communist danger. Nowadays this Middle Eastern architecture has shifted 180 degrees to where Russia, Turkey and Iran are in an ad hoc alliance against Islamic State but which may turn against the West as well. Still, the new alliance might be termed as a marriage of inconvenience where each of the parties has different motives and is acting at cross purposes in partitioning the Syrian bear. (more…)

By Anne Barnard.. BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government, flush with pivotal battlefield gains and bolstered by support from Iran and Russia, is finding itself the beneficiary of an evolving regional realignment spurred by the war in Syria. Egypt and Turkey, countries that were once vocal opponents of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, have, to varying degrees, softened their positions. Egypt, the region’s most populous Sunni country and wary of Iran’s Shiite theocracy, has made its tacit, increasing support of the Syrian government public for the first time. And Turkey, a Sunni regional power, is reshaping the Syrian battlefield by edging closer to Russia and dampening its longtime support for rebels fighting Mr. Assad. [Photo top right:A ruined building Friday in Talbiseh, Homs Province. The Arabic graffiti reads, “From Homs, Save Aleppo.” Bombing has escalated in Syria in recent weeks.Credit Mahmoud Taha/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images](more…)

By Caroline B. Glick.. So Obama let Syria burn. He let Iran and Hezbollah transform the country into their colony. And he let Putin transform the Mediterranean into a Russian lake. A new Syria is emerging. And with it, a new Middle East and world are presenting themselves. Our new world is not a peaceful or stable one. It is a harsh place. The eastern side of the city, which has been under the control of US-supported rebel groups since 2012, is being bombed into the Stone Age by Russian and Syrian aircraft. All avenues of escape have been blocked. (more…)

By Zalman Shoval.. Channel 1’s “scoop” that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was at one point a KGB agent does not seem to have come as a shock to the Israeli intelligence establishment. It also should not affect Israel’s decision on whether to accept Russia’s offer to host talks between Abbas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow, since Israel has already held talks with murderer and then-PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat — meaning there is no moral argument for not holding similar talks with Agent Abbas. The more important question is: Is the ground ripe for such talks, and is there any reasonable chance they would result in a positive outcome of any kind?(more…)

By WJC.. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who courageously saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from deportation to the German death camps, was executed in a Soviet prison, according to the diaries of Ivan Serov, a former director of the Soviet spy agency KGB. According to the ‘New York Times’, Serov’s diaries were discovered inside the walls of his second home in northwestern Moscow, which his granddaughter is now renovating. “I have no doubts that Wallenberg was liquidated in 1947,” Serov wrote, according to the ‘Times’. (more…)

By Sputnik International.. In a telephone conversation with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday (July 19, 2016), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his willingness to cooperate closely with Iran and Russia “to settle regional crises and restore peace and stability to the region.” But what do Russian political analysts make of the Turkish leader’s proposals? (more…)

By Reuters.. One of Netanyahu’s immediate concerns is a forthcoming report from the Middle East Quartet, that is expected to use unusually tough language in criticizing Israel’s expansion of settlements. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Rome on Sunday (June 26, 2016) to try to fend off pressure from the United States and Europe over his settlements policy and opposition to a French-led effort to forge peace with the Palestinians. (more…)

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